A year ago today we launched SBM Blog with excitement and trepidation. We hoped to be able to increase the value of State Bar membership with a new, no-cost resource. To be sure, we were already providing plenty of useful material to our members. Our flagship publication, the Michigan Bar Journal, delivers superb, award-winning content on a monthly basis. SBM News gives members a daily full helping of mainstream news of interest to Michigan lawyers. Our weekly public policy newsletter provides timely detail about proposed legislation and court rule changes. But increasingly we were finding important and interesting stories in the blogosphere that didn’t fit well into any of those services.
As sure as we were that there was enough content out there on a daily basis to justify launching a blog, we weren’t sure at all about reader interest. We worried both about being flooded with unruly, unmanageable reader comment, and about nobody reading us at all. Happily, our fears proved groundless. Our readership has grown steadily, often topping the thousand-mark on a daily basis, and comment (while we wish there were more) is both manageable and interesting. Most readers are from Michigan, but we are astonished to have an international readership, too. We track what stories are most popular on a regular basis and have refined our offerings accordingly. To your credit, the blog traffic statistics tell us that you like the stories on ethics as much as you like the newsy and the whimsical. (Our regular harvesting of lawyer stories from The Onion is particularly popular). We’re pleased to have been able to break a great Michigan lawyer story – the first Daughter-Father team to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court. We make it a point to bring you stories about the dramatic ways in which the practice of law is changing, and to point toward thought-provoking legal posts from around the world, especially from our neighbor, Canada. We look for stories about how technology is changing the delivery of legal and court services, in ways both positive and negative, and bring you weekly tech tips from our Practice Management Resource Center. And our assumption that most lawyers are interested in constitutional law but few have the pleasure of a constitutional law practice causes us to bring you posts on emerging constitutional debates going on in the legal academy, especially as they relate to important national news, such as the health care law and the precarious economic condition of many states.
We also worried, needlessly, about our stamina for the care and feeding of a daily blog. We produce it entirely within existing resources, adding to workplates that were already plenty full. So far, so good. The very positive feedback we’ve gotten steadily is sufficiently energizing to keep us going. And the work of producing the blog is both fun and rewarding, giving us important and useful insights into the interests and views of State Bar members.
As editor and primary blogger, I need to give special birthday thanks to my indispensable colleagues Samantha Meinke and Nancy Brown. Sam’s enthusiasm and “we can do this” attitude was essential to the decision to launch, and her proficiency in all-things-blog has moved us steadily forward. And Nancy, as always, is the wise, quiet and superb adviser behind the scenes.
Finally, a word about the look of the blog. The very talented Sarah Nussbaumer provided the clean, user-friendly and durable format. I try to honor it whenever I can with a great piece of art. Thank goodness the copyrights on some of the world’s greatest art have expired, and the images are sitting right there on the web, ready for the taking.
And most of all, thank you, readers, for your loyalty and comment. With your steady feedback, the best is yet to come.
